Rethinking the revolution

Louise Perry’s A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century (Polity, 176 pp.) is intended for young adult women wading through the muddled waters of liberal feminism. An adaptation of Perry’s controversial 2022 book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, it critiques hookup culture, the porn industry, “sex work,” and the thin concept of consent, among other topics.

Perry, a British journalist, podcast host, and self-identified feminist, argues that the sexual revolution largely benefited men in pursuit of casual, commitment-free sex, while leaving women to bear the carnage. Under the guise of sexual freedom and female empowerment, liberal feminism has failed to acknowledge something we inherently know: Sex carries intrinsic specialness. This deception is especially dangerous for Perry’s intended audience, young women, who are most vulnerable to sexual predation and other harms.

Perry describes how her own assumptions about sex changed as she worked at a rape crisis center in her 20s and experienced “consent workshops” firsthand. The book portrays sexual violence and erotic topics in detail.

At age 33, Perry is now married with a young child. Her book’s concluding chapter, titled “Listen to Your Mother,” offers advice she says she would give her daughter. But those in search of an “alternative form of sexual culture,” or a “sexual counter-revolution,” as Perry describes it, may be disappointed. Even in today’s culture, her advice––wait a few months to have sex with a new boyfriend, or have sex with a guy only “if you think he would make a good father,” or get drunk and high “in private and with female friends”––hardly seems revolutionary or groundbreaking.

Still, Perry devotes considerable space to positively contending for the differences between men and women, though she relies on evolutionary theory to explain these differences. She argues for the goodness of marriage and childbearing, something young adults certainly need to hear from all kinds of voices.

Christians reading this book should understand that the lies lurking behind the sexual liberation narrative are harmful and dangerous at the root because they are an affront to the goodness of God’s created order. The Bible places a high value on sex differences and on sexual intimacy as designed for a man and a woman within the bonds of marriage. Those who live out this reality play a critical role in any serious efforts to re-erect social safeguards that have been torn down and encourage young people to take sex more seriously.

Perry recently described herself as an agnostic Christian, drawn to Christianity’s sociological tenets. The book, while helpful in its critiques, reveals she hasn’t quite found her way.